"If you like I will go with you and read you these sermons?"
They went up the pasture, and left the horse feeding under the saplings.
The old man seemed awe-struck, as if he thought Gard might be some such spiritual stranger as visited the prophets of old and the chosen servants of the Lord. He walked on, looking up shyly at his sudden guest, who went beside him, straight, slim, and sinewy, with sun-tanned skin, shaven lips, silky black beard, singular hat, with broad, stiff brim, and did not, surely, in that garb at least, look like other men. When they came to where the path passed from the clearing into the thicket again the negro stepped aside. Gard motioned and said:
"After you, Daddy Joe."
"Ain' he know my name! Ain' he know my name!"
The path led down and came out on the bank of a creek, with old willows along it and a single little cabin back of the willows in a meadow. Across the creek were cornfields, and in the distance the chimneys of a large plantation house.
Gard asked, "Have you something for me to eat?"
"Yes, sah. Yes, sah."
They sat down on a rickety bench at the cabin door, and Gard read the two tracts while Daddy Joe watched with troubled, pathetic eyes, and after it brought out corn-bread and bacon sizzling in a pan. The sunshine was warm. Some bird whistled shrilly in the willows over the brown, sluggish creek. The smoke of the distant chimneys hung heavily. Gard felt as if he would like to let his business slide and watch for hours dreamily the hanging smoke, and gather the sense of contrast between the tumult of the times and spirit of the settled land brooded over by memories of generations at peace, of homes and familiar things.
"Daddy Joe," he said, suddenly, "we must work in our garden."